Published: 04 February 2022
Pandemic response requires extensive organizational planning and agility. The continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic means business and IT leaders should arrange short- and long-term plans to protect employee health and safety, assess third-party exposure, and ensure continuity of operations.
The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic persists; organizations can leverage Gartner resources to maintain continuity of operations in uncertain contexts and establish attainable business objectives.
See Gartner’s Pandemic and Vaccine Management Resource Center.
Topics in this initiative include:
Vaccine Management: Take actions to ensure the effective distribution, administration and surveillance of vaccines and immunization.
Prepare: Establish organizational resilience, prioritize business functions, define recovery options, and mitigate or eliminate the impact of threat exploitation.
Respond: Take actions to respond to a business disruption.
Recover: Restart business functions and reorient to working in a changed environment.
Renew: Make decisions to address managing a hybrid workforce, the future of work, the new “human deal,” employment value proposition in the context of pandemic-driven “great resignation” and competition for talent.
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The spread of the coronavirus and its various strains that caused the global COVID-19 pandemic is a clear indicator that companies need to prepare for, respond to, recover from and renew after large-scale global disruptions. This dynamic situation, which over the course of the last few years, has proven to be one of the most disruptive incidents in everyone’s lifetime. Entire nations restricted daily travel and closed nonessential businesses. Globally, organizations were forced to reassess core functions — employee travel, supply chains, workforce locations, facility hygiene, enterprise risk management, talent management, technology security and management, product launches, sales and marketing, internal communications — and the impact on overall operations. While many nations and organizations are now reopening, many of these measures continue in countries where the pandemic remains uncontrolled due to a lack of availability of vaccines or poor adherence to public health measures.
The situation has impacted nearly every aspect of the economy, including investment activity, consumer behavior, supply chain realignment, and how and where people work. All organizations have been disrupted, forcing them to strive for a better understanding of where their processes, systems and organizational structures failed. Once the initial response and recovery actions were complete, leaders began determining what resources needed reconfiguration. These assessments are critical and will guide an organization beyond mere survival and into a phase of reconstruction and renewal, even as the global conditions remain unsettled.
In 2021, every person, organization and nation had to determine how vaccinations would play into their personal life, workforce protection and public health. The extraordinary measures enacted by governments worldwide show that pandemics aren’t a usual business disruption. These events require an extra set of activities that include consultations with epidemiologists, public health officials, legal advisors, business leaders, employees and more.
Our research covers the breadth of organizational roles, including the C-suite, supply chain/procurement, risk managers, HR leaders, legal and compliance leaders, marketing leaders, auditors and more. Our research also addresses the needs of technology service providers and investors who help to bring new products and services to market.
The resources highlighted in the Gartner Pandemic and Vaccine Management Resource Center are organized by the phases required for a strong pandemic management approach. These phases include vaccine management, prepare, respond, recover and renew.
This research will explore how to manage these complex areas so business and IT leaders can bring the organization through a crisis in a focused and well-organized way for a new normal.
Leaders must set attainable business objectives while meeting regulations, both immediate and long term, as global responses to the COVID-19 outbreak severely disrupt the world economy, the health and well-being of workers, and workplace options, creating talent management challenges. Leaders must be aware of government policies and vaccine mandates; gather and deploy the resources, people, information, processes and tools that power safe and reasonable operations aligned with strategic plans; and execute effectively and efficiently.
Leaders should use Gartner’s research to optimize capabilities and organizational success. Our research in this area addresses the following topics:
Organizations need to determine the activities to establish a governance structure for organizational resilience, prioritize business functions based on criticality, define recovery options, and mitigate or eliminate the impact of threat exploitation.
How should I establish a governance structure and reporting cadence for ensuring resilience in my organization?
How do I prioritize business functions/processes and all associated resources (workforce, facilities, IT, third parties, equipment) based on risk and criticality to the organization?
How do I develop recovery strategies and solutions to mitigate the impact of threat exploits in existing operations and new projects?
How do I ensure my resilience solutions are current based on the changing organizational profile?
New research will be published based on global needs.
To respond to disruptive events, like a pandemic, organizations need to identify the immediate actions and activities needed to respond to a business disruption via situational awareness, monitoring and recovery plan activation.
What roles should my organization have in place in order to respond to the ongoing challenges of the pandemic?
How should I monitor business disruption via situational awareness and recovery plan activation?
With whom do I communicate regarding a disruption, how often and through which channels?
How do I balance loss of physical proximity with continued service delivery?
New research will be published based on global needs.
In order to recover from the impact of a pandemic, organizations will need to take actions to restart business functions via alternate work arrangements and reorient to working in a changed environment.
How should I restart business functions via alternate work arrangements and reorient to working in a changed environment?
What solutions should I have in place that provide end-to-end organizational operations visibility as well as situational monitoring of public health and economic conditions?
Which existing solutions will enable my organization to utilize mechanisms to ensure employee health and safety and monitoring in the workplace?
What does the vaccine rollout mean for my organization? Are organizations requiring COVID-19 immunization for a return to the workplace?
New research will be published based on global needs.
Organizations need to evaluate the activities that will be needed to rebuild for the “next normal” created by the business disruption.
How do I monitor my changing business operations to endure a multimonth disruption?
How should I rebuild my workforce, facilities, leadership teams and supply chains for the new normal created by the pandemic?
What new products/services can I bring to market to ensure long-term viability?
What are the key lessons learned and best practices, especially in the area of digital acceleration, and how can we apply in our organization?
New research will be published based on global needs.
Analysts:
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